Chyoo 3???

[SparkyMan]

Wow!

I just spent over an hour reading each posting in detail. Having once been a regular "poster" on the boards, I've gotten away from posting, mainly because the link wasn't working on CHYOO2!

I haven't even gone to the new site to check it out, but am thouroughly encouraged by the enthusiasm one man can create, by starting something on his own. (He should run for president!)

As far as any changes being made, I agree with the majority of the responses. The biggest problem I had with immersive stories, was that you didn't know what kind of names you were supposed to put in the fields until you read the stories. The main character could have been a female, and you end up entering a guy's name, or you're supposed to use a guy and a girl's name, etc...

Having the story summary, complete with instructions on what names to enter (if it's immersive) display on the cover page is very helpful.

I agree with jakelyon, that we need to find a way to alert all the other "great writers" on CHYOO2 to what is available with the new site. If I had not checked this out on a whim, I'd never know about it!

My thoughts on the "restrictions" of topics. I somewhat agree with an earlier post, which states that if the "story" is well written, that "taboo" subjects could be approached with a certain amount of discretion. Underage is definly out, but rape and beastiality have been covered in many other writings where the focus is not on the actual act, but moreso on the emotions and feelings.

I like the idea that each "story" will fall into one category, but individual threads can be marked with the topics that are included in that thread. (Getting back to my above point) If a reader then feels he/she objects to the content, they don't have to read it. (i.e. the beginning of the thread says "m/m", and you have an aversion to male homosexuality ... don't read it!)

Just my thoughts for now... I will be back with comments after I check out the new site.

Thanks for all the hard work!

Good to be back!

 

[SparkyMan]

Column Count error

I seem to be getting the same error message when I try to log on


"column count ...."

Is there a trick to getting this not to come up?

 

[Zingiber]

Re: Column Count error

I seem to be getting the same error message when I try to log on


"column count ...."

Is there a trick to getting this not to come up?

I think OFHabit may need to fix your account on Chyoo3. Not sure if there is anything to do on your end.

-Z

 

[ofhabit2]

1. OK, I fixed that column count error. That was a code problem / my fault.

2. Multiple imports will happen ... eventually.

Hey, everybody ... you may have noticed that I've been gone. Sorry. Thanksgiving, then work, and now Christmas are conspiring to steal away any and all time that I previously had to work on the new site. I'm still thinking about it, but I just really haven't had the time.

What I think is really necessary for me as a programmer is a good design. I'm just sort of winging it, based on what I can observe myself. This is, of course, a terrible way to write a website. So, before I write any more code, I think it would be good to consider exactly what we want the site to be able to do. Here's a first draft:

First visit to the site: When a user first shows up to the site, it should be easy for them to jump right in. Lists of recent / popular stories should be readily visible, as should sign up information, and site information, including a FAQ and a contact link / page.

Starting to read a story: Clicking on a story link will take you to a story "cover page," which will contain the following information: story title, subtitle, a synopsis, the creator, and a list of contributors. From the cover page, the user can choose to fill-in-the-blanks (if any), or go to the first page of the story.

Reading a story, page by page: Each page has a title and some amount of text. The page may optionally have a continuing question -- if so, then readers can choose to continue the story by adding their own page to it.

Adding a page: If a user would like to add a page to a story they are reading, they can click the "Add a page" link. (*This link will not be shown if the page already has its maximum number of sub-pages, which a story creator specifies.) The user may then answer the continuing question for the current page, and enter a new page, complete with title, page text, and a continuing question, if they like. If the user is the story creator, an editor, or a trusted writer, they page is instantly approved. If not, then the page is "locked" until approved by the story creator, or an editor.

Adding a story: Put on a link from the user homepage ("My home") to allow adding a story. Stories consist of the information I mentioned above in the "Starting to read a story" section. CHYOO2 had a waiting period on stories being approved

Searching: At first, allow searching by title, creator, writer, and/or genre. All results will automatically be sorted, the most recently updated being displayed first. Eventually, make stories / pages searchable by every piece of information imaginable, and sortable by any of it as well.

Import: Allow users to import their stories/pages from CHYOO2. Allow this import to take place more than once. This brings up some interesting questions at the next import about what to do when stories are updated on both sites, which are hard questions to answer. The upside of this, though, is that, until chyoo3 is totally off the ground, users can continue to add to CHYOO2 and not have to worry about losing their stories.

Backup: Allow users some way to download a compressed copy of a story they have. Users shouldn't have to rely on us to keep their stories safe, and it would be nice to have an easy way to get a backup.

Genres / metadata: Each story will fall into one genre. (*Eventually, it would be nice to have page-level genre/category information, so that users could seek out threads they enjoy, or enjoy topics they know they don't want to read.)

My Home / user homepage: The most important things on this page are: a list of a user's stories, a list of their pages, a list of pages in their stories that require approval, and a link to add new stories. (*Other stuff to eventually include are: favorite authors list, disliked authors list, favorite stories list, favorite pages list.)

Fill-In-The-Blanks: When an author creates a story, they may choose to create any number of "blanks" that the story reader may choose to fill in before the story. I didn't really like the way CHYOO2 did it, though it was better than nothing. The new way: the story creator chooses any number of blanks. Each blank will consist of an abbreviation, a description, and a default. The blank will be usable by page writers by typing out the abbreviation surrounded by brackets (so, if the abbreviation is FIRSTNAME, to put it in the story, type "{FIRSTNAME}"). The default will be the value used for the blank if a reader doesn't go to a "fill in the blanks" page. A link to the fill in the blanks page will be shown on the story cover page. When a reader chooses to fill in the blanks, they will be taken to a page where they can enter a value for each blank (and will be shown a description for each blank).

Creator, Editor, Trusted, Writer: These terms say what role a given user has in a given story. I think, in CHYOO2 terminology, "editors" are actually people who are "trusted." On chyoo3, the two things will be separate. "Writers" will always have to wait to have their pages approved. Until the page is approved, no changes may be made to it (it is "locked"). Writers may edit their own pages, once the page has been approved. "Trusted" users are like Writers, but they will have their pages automatically approved. "Editors" are like Trusted users, but they may also approve pages written by "Writers," edit pages written by other users, and change story settings. The "Creator" is like an editor, but since she or he started the story, they control who is allowed to be an Editor, Trusted, etc. Since there is very little difference between an Editor and the Creator, the Creator should be very careful who they choose to elevate to Editor status, if anyone.

Email: There should be notification at lots of points. Users should be able to, if they want to, be informed when: their is a page added to a page of theirs, a page added to a story of theirs, a page added that they might need to approve (if they are an editor), there is feedback on a page of theirs, a page of theirs in someone else's story is approved, they are promoted to Trusted or Editor on someone else's story.

Feedback: We have to come up with something clever, some way for people to give authors feedback.

Multiple points of Human Redundancy: There should be more than one story moderator ... lots of story moderators, preferably. And, there should really be more than one site programmer, otherwise, you'll get more big downtimes, when my life gets filled up.

There's got to be other stuff ... help me out on this ...

I welcome any feedback to any of this.

 

[gizmoo69]

Everything sounds great, looks like you really have been putting a lot of thought into CHYOO3.

I had one idea: with the fill-in-the-blanks, would it be possible to type in and store the responses to common blanks on the home page, so that you only need to type it once. For instance, for FIRSTNAME, it could be stored to default to your first name. It may not take more than a few seconds to type your name in, but if someone makes a really personalised story, then we could (potentially) end up with dozens of boxes to fill in, each and every time we read that story.

I'd also like to say that i'm really sorry but I have no idea about web programming, so can't help at all. This kinda reminds me of the story of Little Red Hen, though, so if you can help but won't, SHAME ON YOU!

 

[niceguy2002tim]

Everything does sound pretty well thoughtout. I am excited the most about the "Fill in the Blanks" section. With that we need to remember the sex of the character for first and last name.

Another thing you didn't mention, although I assume you've heard already is... Adding Pages. With Chyoo2 there is a time-out function that will lose your typing if you don't submit it in a certain amount of time. The time can't be anymore than 20 - 30 minutes. I'd love to see that done away with. Sometimes writers don't backup their work, only to have it lost when they try to submit.

thanks for all the work you've been puttin into the site. I know a little HTML when it comes to building websites, but really nothing special. I built my site on angelfire using only HTML, if you would like to see what it is.. visit.... www.angelfire.com/al2/niceguy I warn you that it's been "under construction" forever... it should just say "abandoned" lol. I need to invest in a scanner... I have programs such as Adobe Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Fireworks and Flash... that latter two I know nothing about. I couldn't invest the time to learn. I know a little about making animated Gif images for the web. My website knowledge is currently in need of an update.

Send me a message if there is anything I can do.
-Tim (niceguy2002tim)

 

[switch76]

Ofhabit2, those ideas sound good.

A few more ideas:
When a user wants to add a page to a story, he/she should be sent to the guidelines page for that story first.

The immersive text should still be of the form {FIRST_NAME} etc. with the underscore, otherwise imported stories will have problems and every page will need editing.

Maybe 'New Stories' should have their own section but shouldn't appear on the front page. They generally have only 1 page and new users may get confused as to why there are no more options or pages to read.

 

[Sixth]

Waaay.

I managed to log in.
I clicked import story.

That was a few days ago. I can't get back to the import option and there's no sign of Aaralon's Discoveries on Chyoo3.

Um.

I can see problems. Can I keep importing? If I can then can I overwrite Ch3 with the latest Ch2 addition? I suppose if someone submits to Ch3 then I can copy'n'paste the page to Ch2. Um.

 

[Zingiber]

Sixth,

Hope Aaralon's Discoveries makes it.

For my part, I've decided to treat Chyoo 2 as "primary" for my existing stories (but have imported them as a backup), and if I get any new ideas, I'll start them out on Chyoo 3.

Later on when it becomes more plausible (Chyoo3 goes out of beta?), maybe I'll reimport my Chyoo2 stories and jump ship.

-Z

 

[The_high_king]

I imported about a MONTH AND A HALF ago, and none of my stories are up. I know chyoo3 is still beta, but DAMN, a MONTH AND A HALF!

Is there something I should know?

 

[Sixth]

I imported about a MONTH AND A HALF ago, and none of my stories are up. I know chyoo3 is still beta, but DAMN, a MONTH AND A HALF!

Is there something I should know?

It's a computer process. If you clicked the link and it didn't work - then it's a beta bug. Try again in the next testing phase.

It's not as if someone's being idle or holding back your stories. Sorry.

 

[Torg]

I'm just curious about the Top 5 listings. What is the difference between "Freshest", "Newest" and "Recent Growth"?

 

[TwiztedClown]

im guessing newest is the newest added, the freshest is the most recent looked at and the recent growth is probably the last to be added too?

 

[Torg]

im guessing newest is the newest added, the freshest is the most recent looked at and the recent growth is probably the last to be added too?

Um, I'm not sure what you just said means.

I thought maybe Newest was stories created most recently, Freshest was stories with newest threads, and had no idea what Recent Growth meant.

 

[Bastian]

Maybe recent growth means stories that have got bigger really fast recently, like 5 new threads in a day or something.

 

[ofhabit2]

Yeah, Torg and Bastian have it right.

Newest = most recently created stories

Freshest = stories with most recently updated pages

Recent growth = stories with largest amount of recent updates (for example, the most new pages in the last month)

Note, however, that all these lists might not be properly maintained yet, especially the Recent Growth list. Tracking the stats required for those lists is one of the little nitpicky things that I haven't gotten around to yet, like moderating story submissions and sending out emails. That's why I started making a list for myself (see my last post here).

I fixed (well, set up) story categories / "genres," so that you can set the genre for new stories, and set it on the story edit screen. If you have any stories without a genre, you might want to fix that. I didn't change the genres at all, since I just wanted to hack them in.

Since then, I've been working on a new way of importing from Chyoo2 that can be run multiple times / again and again. The first import is all set and working, and it gets new pages on subsequent imports -- I just need to figure out a good way to get the *updated* pages in stories on later imports (it doesn't do that yet). One idea I have is to look at user's "My Threads" pages, which should get all the updated/changed pages that *that user* wrote. That still leaves any updated/changed pages that other people wrote, in your stories. I'll also allow people to specifically request single pages that they know need to be imported.

Here's my question to you all: how often do you go back and change/update pages you've written before (not counting adding to the page by making a new child / question-response, of course). Do you do it often? Only occasionally? How much of a problem is it if those pages don't get automatically updated? The problem is, there's no good way to tell about those "other updates" without looking at *every* *single* *page* in the story you're checking ... and I just don't think our poor importing robot can handle that kind of workload on any sort of routine basis.


Oh, and one more thing ... once the new import method is done, it would be *really nice* if I could start over with the threads on chyoo3. Is everyone backed up? I'm not saying I'll erase everything without warning ... I'm just saying, this is something close to a warning. Move your stuff to chyoo2 if it's not there already, and it'll get imported back in.

 

[AaronWebster]

Nice to hear that the recent pages updater thing is working. I'll give that a try in a bit and see if it will pick up some of the pages that got missed last time round.

Of course, I guess that means that the new pages that I manually created on Chyoo 3 to match my new entries on Chyoo 2 will be duplicated. As well as the new stories that I created in both locations.

Just a suggestion, and bear in mind that I know nothing about the language that you are programming in, but do know a bit about databases: When pulling in the stories and threads from Chyoo 2, would it not make sense to keep the original story and thread numbers (which I assume are part of the original record). That way it shouldn't be possible to create duplicates, because they would just be overwritten.

Anyhow, keep up the good work.

Merry X

Aaron

 

[Torg]

Wish List

Watch functions for stories: email notification when a story changes, different levels of changes: any change, new threads, edited threads, and voted threads. One thing about chyoo2 that is annoying is that when someone votes on a thread, the system acts like its a new thread.

Deleting stories and threads. This would solve the problem of repeated stories. The editor could just go and delete the extra copies.

Bookmarking. I use it all the time.

 

[Torg]

Bug

If you try to add a story, make the person log in first. Right now, the Add link is live when you aren’t logged in, you can type in your thread, and then it gets lost.

BTW, great work. Thanks.

 

[lilguy]

made a new story but can't see to add anything to it. Whats the deal.

 

[The_high_king]

How about fixing the internal errors for some storymaps? What's up with that?

Can't really explain why I can't see my own storymaps

 

[Torg]

I thought of another nifty idea.

Put updates about Chyoo3 on the front page of the site. Have a small news section. It will keep the page fresh (keep people looking at it), and it gives people who find it an update without them needing to sign up for Literotica.com.

 

[artican]

I just finished reading through this whole thread and wow... I've never seen such a large thread in the chyoo forums before. Congrats on that alone. A bigger congrats and thank you for taking the time to do this project.

I hope that fill-in-the-blank option works. I get annoyed by having to type in {FIRST_NAME} all the time, I need a shorter keyword that isn't in all caps.

I have a question for searches. Do we categorize our stories ourselves or will the searches just pick up keywords? If they're categorized, will each thread be categorized within the story or just the story in general? There are points in my story that are lesbian (f/f) and voyeur (v), while others are male with multiple female partners (m/f+). I'm sure others have stories like that and I'd like to be able to skip to the scene that I would be in the mood for and maybe backtrack from there to see how it got to that point.

My suggestion for feedback would be to include some sort of written script after the thread that gives opinions. It would sort of be like a mini message board, it could also give the... um... feedbacker's (?) rating next to the message so that only those who give feedback can give a valid rating to the thread, meaning they would have to justify their rating.

 

[artican]

I started a new story in Chyoo3 but I can't seem to add to the first page. Am I doing anything wrong?

 

[fifthfiend]

dcdcdc one one one eleven